To One In Paradise
by Get The Pop-Tart
Summary: Remus Lupin thought that Tillie Morgan was the girl for him. In fact, he knew it. That is why he refuses to let her go and why he'll never stop looking until she's in his arms again. RL/OC during and shortly after the Marauder years. M is for Maybe...wink
1. Shorn Of My Strength

**I don't own Harry Potter. I do own a younger, quite alive Remus Lupin. O.K, maybe _own_ isn't the best way to describe the way I'm currently holding him hostage in my guest bedroom, but that's just semantics. HE'S MINE!**

**This will be mostly canon at the beginning ('cept the rat. In my mind, Peter exists, but he's like, hibernating or something. I don't actually know where he is in my mind, but it seems like he'd nap a lot. Anywho, you won't be seeing much of him.) Near the middle it'll begin to be a bit not-as-canon-as-in-the-beginning and the end will be pretty much my own imagination.**

**Also, I am absolutely in love with the work of Edgar Allen Poe. The main title is the same as that of one of his poems which I feel conveys the idea of the basis of this fic quite well. Each chapter will also be named with a quote from his poetry. Unlike the main title, the poems that the chapter titles come from hold no resemblance to the chapters themselves. For example, if a title comes from _Annabel Lee_, it does not mean that someone will die a seaside death (or have anything to do with a boat; my mom is convinced that Annabel Lee was a boat with a broken sail who was put in a dry dock)**

**Chapter one's title comes from _For Annie_ (one of his more beautiful poems, in my opinion).**  
><strong>At the end, I'll add a final chapter that will cite each of the following chapter names. But like I said, they're all Poe's, not mine.<strong>

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><p> <strong>Shorn of My Strength<strong>

"Wait." He heard Sirius behind him, but he kept going. He knew he should be soaked due to the torrents of rain hitting his back, and he knew that at 1:00 AM in February, he should be shivering on his hasty way _into_ the castle, but he was numb. Even if he could experience either sensation, he wouldn't care. All that mattered at the moment was getting away from Hogwarts, away from the memories.

"Moony, wait!" he heard James yell out "this isn't what she would have wanted!"

He didn't slow down.

Somehow, through the white noise of the storm and the pounding of his pulse in his ears, he heard their footsteps as they made their way across the brick walkway after him. He didn't change his pace; even if they did catch up to him, their words couldn't make him stay.

"Moony!" Sirius yelled as he ran. Their footsteps turned _squish_ier sounding, indicating that they had moved past the brick and on to the dirt, or in this case mud, walkway that continued the rest of the way off school grounds. Good, he hoped they slipped.

They did catch up with him, running past him and blocking his path. Instead of going around them, he stopped. They'd move eventually.

"Remus, you're being impulsive." Sirius said

It was then that Remus did something he would never have imagined doing to one of his best friends. Still, the feeling of his fist colliding with Sirius's face was a lot more satisfying than he expected.

"Don't you dare try to deny me impulsivity." Remus said, more menacingly than he thought himself capable. "You have no right. I have been the reasonable one for years!"

"Let us return the favor then." James spoke up.

"What if it were Lily?" Remus countered. "You'd be doing exactly what I am."

"And you'd be in my place." James said after a moment.

"And we're not saying you shouldn't go after her, mate." Sirius said, his hand still covering his cheek where Remus had punched him.

"You shut up." Remus snapped.

"But he's right. We know you'll go after her. Just wait until we have a plan. You're always saying we need a good plan, and once we've got one, hell, we'll even help you execute it."

"I can't just let her go."

"You're not _letting_ that girl do a damn thing," said Sirius, "Not Tillie."

At the mention of her name, Remus fell to his knees, not caring that his clothes were now muddy. They were already wet. Remus felt the rain for the first time. It was kind of poetic. Tillie was gone, and the world was weeping.

For a moment, they were all still. Then a loud crash of thunder and a very visible lightning bolt got Sirius and James moving again.

"Moony, man, it's friggin' dangerous out here. Let's get back to the castle." He and James all but dragged their friend inside.

This time, he didn't protest

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><p><strong>So there it is. Did you enjoy it? I know we don't know much about Tillie (who she is, why she left, why Remus has gone batshit crazy over it, etc) but I'm planning on doing a flashback every even chapter (though there will be exceptions) and building her character like that.<strong>

**Anyway, I hope you liked chapter one. Chapter two will be here shortly**


	2. Many and Many a Year Ago

**I have not miraculously gained ownership of Harry Potter between when I wrote Chapter I and now. Let's just assume that Chapter I's disclaimer applies to this entire story unless I state otherwise.**

**This chapter is in italics because, as I promised previously, this is a flashback chapter. Since I can't guarantee that each even chapter will always be a flashback, I'll add the italics for added clarification. Though I seriously hope you'll be able to tell the difference between them.**

**As usual when something is written almost all in italics, the things that would normally be in italics if the chapter wasn't in italics aren't in italics. I'm kind of wondering if that sentence made everything _more_ confusing after I've read it aloud, but I'm leaving it in here. I'm sure you're all plenty clever enough to figure it out.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Two: Many and Many a Year Ago<strong>

"_Which one?' Sirius asked, holding two of his leather jackets up beside each other._

"_They're exactly the same, Padfoot." James said, rolling his eyes_

"_Moony?" Sirius turned to Remus, begging for a definitive opinion._

"_The one on the left." Remus said._

"_You didn't even look." Sirius whined._

_Remus looked up and groaned in exasperation. "Prongs is right; those jackets are identical. And I was just about to get to the good part." He looked back down at his book._

"_If you know when the good part is before it even happens, you've read that book enough times to stop and give a guy some assistance." pronouncing 'assistance' as if he were speaking French._

"_It's l'aide." Remus corrected him. "and I_ would_ help you if there was a single difference between them. But there isn't. Look at the tag. A sickle says that you bought two of the same thing."_

_Sirius checked the tags. "Oh."_

_James started laughing hysterically. Remus chuckled, and Sirius turned bright red._

"_Stop it." He said, knowing full well they wouldn't. He threw one of the jackets on the bed and put the other one on. After Sirius checked his hair in the mirror the three of them stampeded down the stairs and into the common room._

"_She sent me to spy on you." A girl who Remus had seen around but never spoken to was leaning on the banister at the foot of the stairs to the boys dorm with her arms crossed in front of her._

"_Bang up job your doing, announcing your presence and all." James said, laughing until Sirius elbowed him in the side._

"_She did?" Sirius asked nervously._

"_For a guy with a different girl on your arm every week, your panic for a first date is kind of hilarious." she said. Remus internally laughed. He liked this girl already._

"_Poe, eh?" she asked, nodding at the black leather bound book Remus was still holding._

"_Yes." He confirmed, though he could tell the girl didn't need him to tell her she was right._

"Cask of Amontillado_ is absolutely brilliant, don't you think."_

"_It's pretty good."_

"_I bet you even have it dogeared"_

"_Well, it's a good story." He said, starting to wiggle his toes inside his shoes (a way of hiding discomfort from a lie, he'd learned. Not that _Cask of Amontillado wasn't_ good or anything. It was. But she knew that it was marked in the book and that freaked him out a little)_

"_Can I see?"_

_He hesitantly handed over the book, expecting her to flip directly to the page in the book that had been dogeared since he'd first seen it. Instead, she looked on the blank page between the interior title and the copyright information._

"_Got a thing for neglected colors, _Matilda_?" She smirked as she turned the book around, displaying the name __'_MATILDA NALADI MORGAN'_written quite neatly in olive green crayon._

_All three of the boys stood very still._

"_I didn't steal it." Remus said, breaking the silence._

"_I know." She said, letting up on the stern look that she'd been faking and grinning. "I left it in the great hall last night. I'm Tillie Morgan" _

"_Remus Lupin." He answered as he shook her outstretched hand._

"_I'm James." James piped up._

"_Oh, I know who you are." She said, using two fingers to pull her black hair out of her hazel eyes. "Might I suggest that you start talking to Lily like she's an actual person? The corny lines are making her sick."_

_Remus could practically see the smoke coming out of James's ears as he tried to process that one._

"_And you." She said, turning to Sirius. "Quite the reputation you have for yourself, Sirius Black."_

"_A good one?" Sirius asked hopefully._

"_No." Tillie said, being blunt, but not unkind. "Hence the 'for a guy with a different girl on your arm every week' et cetera et cetera."_

"_Well, maybe this time it will be different." He said quickly. Remus could tell he was doing his best to get Tillie's approval. He knew the influence a girl's friends had on her dating choices._

"_Oh, she's counting on it not being. Felicity isn't really one for relationships either." She saw Sirius visibly relax before continuing. "But she's still my best friend, and if you hurt her I will personally come and chop your balls off with a rusty butter knife and leave you to bleed out on the floor. Got it?"_

_Sirius slowly nodded. The way Tillie had said those words (and the words themselves) honestly had him scared. Even Remus and James backed up a step as if the threat might be applicable to them from association._

_Tillie smiled widely, revealing white teeth. "Good. See you around" She gave a jaunty wave, hugged her book to her chest, and skipped away._

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><p><strong>Chapter Three Coming Soon<strong>


	3. O'er His Soul, a Shadow Fell

**O'er His Heart, a Shadow Fell**

"I'm going to drop out." Remus said. The three boys had been sitting silently in the common room, which was empty, given the late hour. Even though they'd dried off quickly, they were still wrapped in extremely soft white towels as they watched the fire burn in the hearth.

"We know." James said in response.

"I'll do whatever it takes."

"We know." It was Sirius who spoke that time.

"She's gone."

"We know!" James and Sirius both finally snapped. For a while, they looked at eachother, awestruck at their outburst. Sirius was the first to speak.

"Sorry, Moony."

"Yeah, mate. We feel for you, truly."

"But that's the eighth time you've told us that she's gone."

Silence.

Silence.

"She used to do this thing with the fire-" Remus began.

"We know."

"I always meant to ask how she did it, but I never did." He finished, ignoring the interruption he'd been expecting.

He heard someone behind him whisper some Latin that he couldn't quite make out, and he twisted his torso in his seat to see who it was. Lily Evans was standing there behind him, wearing striped flannel pajama pants and a pink tank top. Her hair was disheveled and she'd clearly just woken up, but she was definitely awake. He turned back to the flames to see the flickering shapes of a fox jumping back and forth over a sleeping puppy.

"I've always wondered why, of all things, she'd choose to make that." Lily said, moving to sit beside James.

"'The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog' is the most commonly used muggle pangram."

"What the hell is a pangram?" Sirius asked blankly

"We would use 'the wizards quickly jinxed the gnomes before they vapourized'" He explained. "It's a sentence that uses all the letters of the alphabet. Quill manufacturers use it to test their products. She loved testing the fluidity of language."

"Is that why she spoke, like, twenty of them?" Sirius asked as James grabbed a piece of parchment and a quill from the end table beside him and started writing.

"Yeah, she was obsessed with the fluidity of language. Are you seriously checking to make sure I'm right?"

"Yes, he is." Lily, looking at what James was writing. "and you are."

"No he's not. There's no N"

"It's at the end of 'brown,' stupid." Lily pointed at the page.

"Oh."

"You're an idiot. I don't know why I'm dating you."

"Thank Tillie for that." James smiled, but Lily punched him in the arm. "You really are an idiot." She hissed, nodding at Remus, who was slouched over again. "He was just starting to lighten up."

"Sorry, Moony." James said.

"That's not going to change anything." Lily said, frowning at her boyfriend.

"Look, Remus." She said, reaching over and patting him on the knee. "After you two spent time together, she was so happy. I can't imagine loving someone as much as she loved you—and you hush" She added to James when he opened his mouth to protest.

"Anyway, I know you loved her just as much. You two had something special. But we also loved her. She was dear to all of us. She set me up with James, and Felicity and Sirius too...kind of. None of us understands why she left. It doesn't make sense. But sitting her, crying about her being gone, will change absolutely nothing. So suck it up and let's figure out what to do." Her voice had been soothing at the beginning, but by the end had turned more forceful.

"There's nothing we can do." Remus said.

"That's it." Lily said, throwing her arms into the air. "You're _impossible!_ If you keep this up, no one will help you with anything. So cut it out, Remus, or we're all going to go fucking insane!"

Remus was shocked into the most clarity he'd had that night.

But even as his consciousness sped to the present, he still remembered.


	4. Words Oft Uttered

**Words Oft Uttered.**

"_Howe artow beeng, his amyable morwening?" She asked, climbing onto the bench next to Felicity at breakfast._

"_Add Middle English to the list." Remus said, nodding at James._

"_On it." James pulled a small notebook from his pocket and added Middle English to the end of a long list. "That makes twelve: English, German, Italian, French, Latin, Spanish, Kiswahili, Icelandic, Welsh, both Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and now Middle English."_

"_There's something wrong with you." James said teasingly._

"_I'm not the one who can't keep a list. I used Scots, as in Lowland Scots at dinner last night."_

"_Thirteen." James ammended. "Are we close yet?"_

"_I told you, I'm not telling you how many there are."_

"_But are we close?"_

"_Close is a subjective term."_

"_Whatever." James said, slamming his notebook back into his pocket._

"_I don't get why you're so intent on compiling a list. They're just languages." She said._

"_Yeah, James, they're just thirteen plus languages. Also, two of them are dead. No biggie." Sirius said sarcastically._

_Tillie shrugged. _

"_You're a linguistic genius, you know that?" Remus said, grinning._

"_Prodigy."_

"_Huh?"_

"_I'm a prodigy, not a genius."_

"_O.K, little miss technicality. Gimme a break and take the compliment, O.K."_

"_Thank you for the inaccurate compliment."_

"_You're welcome."_

"_Quit flirting and get a room." Lily finally said._

"_Yeah, get a room." James was quick to agree._

"_You're pathetic." Sirius said to James. _

_James blushed and busied himself with spreading butter on his toast._

"_What is it about languages that you like so much?" Remus asked Tillie, wanting to find out as much as he could about her. It'd been months since she'd become an unofficial member of the mealtime group, but he still couldn't figure her out._

"_I love how the same 32 letters can create so many different words. Duck, pato, __ö__nd, bata, papera, ente, canard, deuk, etc etc. It fascinates me that none of those words actually mean anything. They are all used to _represent_ a duck, but only because people decided they mean duck. Not because the words themselves are duck._

_Remus had never thought about it that way. To him, a duck was a duck, plain and simple. But Tillie saw it differently. Tillie saw a duck, and saw all of the different ways people have thought of ducks._

"_Why duck?"_

"_It just came to me. Things do that sometime. I'm a bit messed up."_

"_You're not messed up."_

"_Yeah, I am. But it's O.K. I don't mind. It makes me sound clever."_

"_You are clever."_

"_C'est vrai."_

"_Can you teach me a language sometime."_

"_It would be my pleasure." She smiled._

_So did Remus._


End file.
